In my addiction and in recovery, I had a lot of shame and isolation around what I was thinking and doing. This shame caused me to hide the truth about my thoughts and actions from others (wife, God, etc.) and, more importantly, from myself. I couldn’t stand the fact that I was engaging in my addictions, and so I started subtly lying to myself. This is where denial came in. Before we go any further, let’s define some terms:
- Denial – “A defense mechanism in which confrontation with a personal problem or with reality is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality.” – Merrian Webster
- Gaslighting – “Gaslighting describes a form of psychological abuse in which the victim is gradually manipulated into doubting his or her sanity. The term originated from the 1938 play Gas Light (known in the United States as Angel Street) by the British dramatist Patrick Hamilton and two film adaptations (1940 and 1944), both named Gaslight, about a woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is going insane.” – Quora
For me, I was mostly unaware that I was in denial. I was telling myself the same lies that I was telling my wife and God and so I felt truthful. I didn’t think I was intentionally trying to manipulate anyone. The scary part of all of this is that I wasn’t aware I was doing it, and so I didn’t know I needed to work on it or that it was making my wife feel insane. I found out that was trying to cope by using a variety of denial mechanisms that I learned about in group counseling (LifeSTAR was where I learned these mechanisms).
So for me, the first step toward recovery in this area was to get some knowledge and examples of what I was doing so I could see it and identify it more easily and start facing the truth instead. Here are the most common ways I was in denial:
- Omitting details – This was me leaving out the most shameful parts of my actions and thoughts so I could share some of the truth with my self, wife, and others, and feel good about that part, but keep some parts hidden. So it could be me saying that I saw an image on the internet today but leaving out that the image was really triggering, or not talking about the nature of the image because that aspect would be more triggering to my wife. Or leaving out the fact that I was searching for something just before I saw the image rather than just running into it by complete accident. Sometimes I minimize those extra shameful details as though they’re not important and so not worth sharing (see minimizing below).
- Minimizing – This is me convincing myself that things aren’t as bad as they really are. The key word here for me is the word “just”. I was “just” searching for random stuff – nothing bad. I was “just” looking up the musical group we’re going to go see to make sure they’re going to be modest. “My behavior isn’t that bad.” Because I was so self-condemning, I had to resort to this because it’s super subtle and could allow me to lie to myself about how important things were so I didn’t beat myself up as much.
- Rationalization/Justification – I’m an engineer, so I would use this one too. This has to do with explaining the reasons behind what I’m doing. I’m a software engineer, I have to use the internet alone all day – there’s no other way to do this. “I’m entitled to act out because it’s the only way I can get rid of my anxiety.”
- Compliance – This is where I do what my wife or counselor or bishop or the scriptures tell me to do just to get them off my back. My heart isn’t in it, I’m just doing what they say to make some consequences go away and get the focus off me. Focusing on the outer appearance of recovery instead of focusing on actually recovering.
- Comparing – “I’m not as bad as other people are. At least I’m not doing those things, which are much worse than what I’m doing.” Or alternatively, “I’m actually even more aware of my lustful issues than the average person, who’s really in more denial than I am, so I’m fine.”
- Compartmentalizing – Stuffing things into different compartments comes in handy during war or childhood trauma so I can deal with those things later when I have the capacity to deal with them, but it’s not handy when I use it to lock me into denial. This is where I put my addiction into one box and my worthiness into another box. It’s almost a mild form of multiple personality disorder where I’m one person by myself acting out my addiction and a different person shaking hands with people at church. “I can’t let the truth about the bad stuff leak out onto everything else in my life or it will ruin everything!” But it’s already leaked out onto everything else, just not in my mind where everything is kept neatly in its own box – not hurting anything else – or so I lead myself to believe.
- Uniqueness – “I’m a very special person with a very special situation, so the rules don’t exactly apply to me.” Sometimes I’d think I was so brilliant that I needed this addiction to keep me humble. So I needed it because I was special. Or maybe I have more stress than the average person, so I need to do something extraordinary to numb out or escape that stress like acting out or engaging in lustful thoughts or fantasy, etc.
- Distracting – Sometimes when confronted by the truth, I blow up and get enraged and yell to create a distraction away from the truth and onto my tantrum or onto the target of my tantrum. This is like the drama triangle when I switch from victim to persecutor too.
- Blaming – Blaming others for my decisions. “If my wife were more kind or understanding, then I could be more honest or behave better.” “My kids stress me out so I have to escape, etc.”
- Intellectualizing – This is where I distract away from the central issue by asking a bunch of irrelevant questions or focus on intellectual aspects of things so that I don’t have to address or admit my faults or poor choices. Sometimes I might hide what I’ve done behind a lot of precise definitions to try to escape guilt or responsibility, like defining pornography or physical acting out so narrowly that I can convince myself and others that I didn’t technically do exactly the things in question.
- Helplessness – “I’ve never been able to have success with this addiction, so why even try?”
I think that a few of the above denial strategies could be considered gaslighting, such as minimizing, omitting details, blaming, etc. I have noticed that sometimes I’m fully aware of what I’m doing and have even thought about how I’m going to check in with my wife beforehand to make things go smoothly. That’s where the codependency comes in too – controlling my wife’s environment, so she doesn’t freak out, so I can feel safe or happy. But more often, I’m lying to myself about these denial mechanisms so the gaslighting isn’t premeditated and conscious – that’s actually the most dangerous because I then don’t even know that I have something to work on and I can’t even trust myself. Then I’m in denial about my denial.
I’ve found the best way out of this is to take the above denial mechanisms and do an impeccably honest written inventory about how I use each one, giving specific examples, and share those with my sponsor, wife, and counselor so that we’re all on the same page with what I’m doing. Then those around me can help me identify when I’m doing these things without awareness. I have also found that God just loves to help me break through denial and so asking Him in prayer to help me see the things I’m doing in this area clearly is essential. My wife and counselor are good sources for examples, but I have to be very careful here. I’m in denial – so a lot of what she says will feel like she’s unjustly accusing me. I’ve learned to trust the vision of those around me more than my own when I’m in denial, so I take the feedback and just write it down. Over several years I became more aware of my denial mechanisms, and then I could admit that my wife was right on the vast majority of the issues she was seeing. For me in denial, it was better to err on the side of exposing denial that I currently disagreed with. As I do all this, I become more aware. Then I stop doing these things as much. The more light I get on these things, the more they get cleaned up.
Leading with my weaknesses helps me a lot too. Instead of starting with my strengths and justifying everything, I can just dive straight to the problem and admit it and surrender it. It’s frightening to do, but the more I do it, the easier it gets and the more I see that much of what I was afraid of as far as consequences go, was just negative fantasy on my part. Even if the consequences did come to pass, working through those consequences was not only possible, it made me a better person and living my life with more honesty was always better than living in lies. And showing my wife that I’m seeing things more clearly and my view of reality is matching her view of reality also builds trust – which is essential to healing my marriage and betrayal trauma.
If you’re LDS, you might find 2 Nephi 4:17-35 of use when considering denial and see how someone can do it right. He starts off with “O wretched man that I am” and talks all about how his sins surround him all the time. But then he says that he knows in whom he has trusted and goes through all of the times God has helped him in his life. So denial skips the first part only focusing on the good, and depression/hopelessness skips the second part, only focusing on the negative. I have found it essential to use this pattern of leading with weakness and following with hope when I share at all times as it keeps me out of denial and depression. This can also be the greatest gift I can give to my children as I show them how to admit and embrace my imperfection and show them who perfects my imperfection. This is much better than putting on a facade of perfection for them to show them how to be perfect – only Christ was perfect, so He can do that. Growing up with “perfect” parents just makes children feel alone and forces them to also put on a fake mask so they can look as perfect as those around them. This hurts them deeply. Be honest, real, and faithful in Christ’s atonement instead!
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